VPN – SnowHaze

Tutorial: Import ZKA registration on iOS

Yvan — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 12:43:39 +0000

With the release of the latest version of our VPN, usage on other devices has become easier. You can register directly from our website and use the VPN on all platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android). After you got a subscription on our website, you can login in the SnowHaze app to import your subscription and use the VPN on your iOS device. Here’s a step-by-step guide.

If you already have a subscription through Apple and you would like to use the VPN on other devices, follow this guide.

1. Get a subscription on our website.

2. Register using an email and password. You can go completely anonymous by registering only with the Master Secret, a secret key that only you know. Make sure to store it in a safe place because we don’t know it and we won’t be able to recover your subscription if you loose it.

3. After successful registration, take your iOS device and log in by tapping on “Already registered” in the settings under “Subscription”.

4. Your active subscription will be imported to your device. This might take a while. A new section will appear at the bottom showing your Master Secret.

5. You can now use the VPN on your iPhone and iPad. The profiles automatically update as long as your subscription is active.

PS: If you need any assistance, don’t hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to help.

Tutorial: Import an existing Apple subscription to use ZKA

Yvan — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 11:38:36 +0000

With the release of the latest version of our VPN, usage on other devices has become easier. You can register without making a purchase and import your existing subscription that is running through your Apple ID. Here’s a step-by-step guide.

If you are already registered via our website and want to use the VPN on your iOS devices, follow this guide.

1. Make sure that you have an active SnowHaze subscription running with your Apple ID. You can have a look in the SnowHaze settings under “Subscription”; if the top screen is green, you can follow the next steps of this guide.

2. Still under “Subscription”, tap on “Use VPN on Other Devices”

3. Register using an email and password. You can go completely anonymous by registering only with the Master Secret, a secret key that only you know. Make sure to store it in a safe place because we don’t know it and we won’t be able to recover your subscription if you loose it.

4. Your remaining subscription will associated to your registration. This might take a while. A new section will appear at the bottom showing your Master Secret.

5. You can now use the VPN on other devices with the client for Windows or by downloading the profiles from your dashboard.

PS: If you want to cancel an active subscription running on your Apple ID, you can do so by choosing “View all my Subscriptions” in the Settings under Subscription and then choose “Cancel Subscription” under SnowHaze. You can make a new subscription anytime on snowhaze.com.

How does a VPN work, and what is it useful for?

Jan — Fri, 17 Jul 2020 08:13:31 +0000

Whenever you connect to the internet, your device sends data packets to a server. During transit, the packets pass different stations, the first one being your internet service provider. All of these stations reroute your package and help it reach its final destination. Imagine a VPN as an encrypted tunnel between your device and a SnowHaze VPN server. Whatever you do online is first rerouted and sent through this tunnel before it reaches its final destination. This way, the VPN hides your actual IP address and ensures the encryption of your data. Originally, VPNs were used to connect different locations of a business to a single network. These days, VPNs are popular mainly for their advantages in terms of privacy and security. They present a simple yet very effective and efficient tool for hiding and encrypting internet traffic. Other common uses of VPNs include streaming videos from abroad, peer-to-peer file-sharing, or accessing blocked or censored websites.

Contrary to what many VPN companies want you to believe, a VPN is not a one-stop solution for anonymity. A VPN offers a set of unique features that are difficult to obtain differently, like hiding the IP address and ensuring encryption. However, there are other common threats that a VPN does not protect against. Unencrypted e-mails, for example, are still unencrypted once they leave the protection of the encrypted VPN tunnel. Many websites use a multitude of tracking technologies, some of which a VPN can protect against, and some of which it can’t. Therefore, it is essential to combine a VPN with other tools such as encrypted e-mail services and private browsers to get the best protection. That said, there are several threats and scenarios where only a VPN can help.

Why would I need a VPN?

You connect to public Wi-Fi

Public Wi-Fi is available at most airports, hotels, and restaurants. Although very practical for remotely working, shopping, or streaming a Netflix series, they also pose a significant security risk. It is relatively easy to intercept traffic in public Wi-Fi. A hacker might even create a malicious hotspot with the sole purpose of sniffing your traffic. Without encryption, the hacker can potentially access sensitive information like passwords or credit card details. Unfortunately, it is challenging to distinguish credible hotspots from their malicious counterparts. With a VPN, the traffic is always encrypted between your device and the VPN server. Even if a Wi-Fi is malicious and intercepts your traffic, it is encrypted and reads like gibberish.

You travel abroad

In foreign countries, some services that you paid for may be blocked. This includes many streaming services but goes as far as search engines; for example, Google is blocked in China. Losing this access is annoying, and this is where a VPN can help. With a VPN, all your traffic is sent to the VPN server first. The VPN server then reroutes the traffic to the final destination. Thus the server of the final destination only ever sees the VPN servers IP address and not yours. If you connect to a VPN server in your home country, you can continue to enjoy all the services that you are used to.

You are shopping online

Salaries and purchasing power vary drastically between countries. Merchants exploit this to increase profit by increasing prices for countries where people have a higher purchasing power. Some merchants even go a step further and use personalized rates. These are based on data about you that is available to the merchant. This process is known as dynamic pricing. Ever wondered when you kept seeing an ad of a product that you once searched online? It is data about your past search history, income, and more that are used to personalize prices. A VPN can help here as it makes it harder for companies to track you. Furthermore, you can connect to a VPN server in a country with lower purchasing power and might receive more moderate prices. This is the case when a merchant uses IP address-based dynamic pricing. Thus, a VPN can help you to profit yourself from dynamic pricing!

You want to protect your browsing activity from your local network and ISP

Whenever you want to connect to the internet, your device initiates a connection with your internet service provider (ISP). Your ISP then redirects your communication to the server of the requested service, be it streaming a video, visiting a website, or sending a message. Because your ISP has to reroute the traffic, it knows which services you are using, who you are in touch with, or which websites you visit. Depending on the connection, the ISP also sees which video you are streaming, or the actual content of the message exchanged. When using a VPN, this is different. In simple terms, you can imagine a VPN as a tunnel between you and SnowHaze VPN servers. Your ISP still needs to reroute your traffic, but only to our servers independent of the service requested. Furthermore, everything is fully encrypted and reads like gibberish for your ISP or other third parties. Thus, a VPN effectively cuts out your ISP. A VPN reduces the amount of collectible data remarkably and prevents third parties from selling and sharing this data with others.

You are a high-risk individual

High-risk individuals like investigative journalists or political activists often face considerable risks associated with their valuable work. Contrary to what many VPN companies want you to believe, a VPN is not a one-stop solution for anonymity. As a high-risk individual, you need to take a multitude of precautions to protect your privacy and ensure your security. Of these precautions, a VPN is an inevitable part to ensure encryption and hide the IP address. Using an end-to-end encrypted e-mail or messaging provider gives an additional layer of security to protect sensitive messages. Combined with a VPN, an excellent private browser can protect from some forms of tracking that a VPN cannot protect from, like canvas fingerprinting.

You use file-sharing services

Peer-to-peer connections (P2P) offer a fast and reliable method to share data. This data may include anything from legitimate documents to illegal videos. Despite the legitimate use cases of P2P, many ISPs throttle the bandwidth of or completely block P2P connections. With a VPN, the ISP cannot distinguish between different connections. Subsequently, your ISP cannot throttle or block any of your P2P connections.

How to use a VPN?

Using a VPN is straightforward. First, get a subscription for SnowHaze VPN here. There is a seven days free trial available in our iOS version. Once you have your subscription, you find detailed tutorials on how to set up your VPN here. Whenever you wish to protect your traffic, you simply turn on the VPN. Then your device connects to one of our VPN servers and establishes the secure communication channel. Everything between your device and the VPN server is now effectively cut out and can’t intercept your communication, including your ISP and other third parties. The service you are accessing now only sees the IP address of the VPN server. This unblocks content such as videos or websites that are blocked based on IP location.

VPN Anonymity with Zero-Knowledge Auth (ZKA)

Yvan — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 08:41:00 +0000

Our infographic visualizes the technology behind ZKA.

Zero-Knowledge Auth (ZKA) is our new protocol that ensures the highest level of anonymity for our VPN. Most VPN providers are not private at all because they store a lot of information about you, like your name and address, your payment information, and logs about your internet traffic.
There are trustworthy VPN companies who promise not to log your usage of their services. They mostly live up to their promise and do not collect data about you. However, we still put the trust into their hands. If they are subject to a data breach, personal information might still be leaked. And the company itself technically has the power to find out what sites you visit.

ZKA revolutionizes the entire process from registration up to the usage of the VPN. There is no longer the need to share personal information. When you connect to the VPN, you don’t even need an anonymized account number to log in. Continue reading below for a detailed explanation.

ZKA Registration

The first step in using SnowHaze VPN anonymously is to generate a cryptograaphic key pair (Read more about cryptography here). First a secret code is generated by performing random calculation on your device. This ensures that this code is strong. We call it Master Secret and it is the basis for all the following operation.
A key pair (private key and public key) is then derived from your Master Secret. The Master Secret acts as starting point such that the keys derived from it are always the same. Since you are the only one knowing your Master Secret, only you can derive your key pair. The public key is sent to the server, where it is stored as a new database entry. The server only knows the public key and will associate all information like payments and validity to your public key.
The server does not know about your Master Secret, which is why it has to be safely stored. If you loose your Master Secret, it’s impossible to recover your subscription.
Users not wanting to loose the Master Secret have the possibility to register with email and password, like most of us are used to from other accounts. In this case, your Master Secret is encrypted with your password and safely stored on the server. The server cannot see it, since it is stored in an encrypted form. Your email is also not visible for the server because it was hashed (Read more about hashing here). The server never sees neither your Master Secret nor your email nor your password. When logging in, you request the encrypted version of your Master Secret from the server, and decrypt it on your device. Now the Master Secret can be used to derive the key pair and sign in.
Note that at any point you can add email and password to your registration or unlink your email and password from your registration.

ZKA Payment

The next step is to activate your registration by adding a payment. You choose a subscription option and pay either by credit card, or anonymously using cryptocurrencies or cash. Your successful payment is sent to the server along with your public key. The server can then credit your public key. From now on, you are allowed to connect to the VPN server. In order to connect with a VPN server, you must prove that you have the right to access it. This happens using tokens.

ZKA Token Generation

The server regularly (e.g. once a week) generates login tokens. All the newly generated tokens are randomly grouped into boxes and every box is assigned to a user. The server doesn’t know which user gets which tokens, neither which tokens are together in a box. When you want to use the VPN for the first time, your device first requests the box containing the tokens and stores it on your device. After that the new box containing new tokens is regularly updated (e.g. once a week).

ZKA VPN Connection

Before connecting to a VPN server, your device randomly picks a token out of the box and sends it to the server. The server let’s you connect if the token is valid. The only information that is exchanged with the server is the token. Remember that the tokens were randomly put into the boxes, which were randomly distributed among the users. The server only knows the public key of a user, and simply sends the box of tokens to the user that requests it using the corresponding private key. There is nothing tracing back to the public key when you connect to the server.

ZKA VPN Usage

Since you have a valid token, the server let’s you connect. Your internet traffic is now encrypted and rerouted over the VPN server. The IP address that websites see is the one from the VPN server. This hides your true IP address protects your location. The server records nothing about your traffic and cannot tie two separate connections to a user. Enjoy the first truly anonymous VPN service.

ZKA Verification

If you are still reading this, we obviously got you interested. As a clever mind your might ask yourself “Sounds good, but how do I know that what you describe is the same as what runs on the server?”. Good question, we thought you might wonder. You can actually verify this yourself.

There is a dedicated process in an enclave of the server, which is in charge of generating and distributing the tokens. This technology by Intel called Software Guard Extensions (SGX) provides a guarantee that the code running in this enclave was not altered. Since all the code is open source, you can check that the fingerprint of the enclave is the same as the one for the code. This gives you the proof that we are running the very same code on our production servers.

Visit our Github page for the verification script and more details https://github.com/snowhaze/zka-sgx

Infographic: Zero-Knowledge Auth Explained

Yvan — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 17:34:40 +0000

Read the text explanation here.

About Business Ethics and VPNs

Yvan — Sat, 27 Apr 2019 10:54:10 +0000

When using a VPN service, you entrust your entire traffic to a single company. This company reroutes all your traffic to give you the advantages of spoofed IP address, encrypted connection, and uncensored internet. However, these advantages come at the cost that you are to some degree at the mercy of your VPN provider.

It is undisputed that the benefits of a VPN greatly outweigh the risks. But it is still worthwhile to take a closer look at the business ethics of VPNs. Shockingly enough, the VPN business makes up for some of the shadiest online companies. Yes, in a market advocating trust, privacy, and security, businesses do, concerning the business practices, not live up to the claims. Read below to learn about some of the most common lies in the VPN industry:

Affiliates

VPN companies use affiliates for advertising their services. Affiliates usually get a generous financial kickback for every signup they generate. Affiliates-marketing is an easy and cheap way for a company to grow sales and is not per se a problem. However, affiliates often engage in misleading customers, spam social media and e-mails, and run smear campaigns against other VPN providers, e.g., when PrivateInternetAccess distributed lies about ProtonVPN

No logs

The “no-logs” claim is an absolute standard in the VPN business. It means that a company is not keeping any logs or storing any other data on the VPN servers. I mean, who wants a company to keep track of what you do online? Not a lot of VPN users… So companies that openly advertise that they keep logs are at a disadvantage, I get it. But unfortunately, it has been shown over and over again that many VPN companies just claim to have a no-log service, while in fact, they don’t. While no-logs sounds super easy, in fact, it is not. It requires some extra effort from your side, from the data center, the software, the employees and so on. While no-logs sounds like default, it is definitely not. Depending on the jurisdiction of the VPN company, no-log services might not even be legal. Therefore, we can still assume that a large number of VPN providers just claim to be no-logs for business purposes but have not invested the time to make it no-log.

Tracking

Privacy-conscious users make up a significant fraction of VPN customers. For many, no-logs is a must and tracking from the VPN provider a no-go. I agree VPN providers have access to the entire traffic of a VPN user, and while some parts of the traffic are encrypted, the amount of data available is still dizzying. Privacy protection as a service is also part of the sales pitch of most VPN brands. I found an article on how to protect from tracking through Google on the website of a very renowned VPN provider. Sadly but not unsurprisingly, I also found a Google Analytics script on the exact same site. I guess a reasonable start would be to protect their users from their own services..?

White label solution

Running a VPN service is neither cheap nor easy. Especially, when you are running a no-log VPN service on dedicated servers, adequate resources are needed, as we know first-hand at SnowHaze. Many of the numerous VPN services are mere white-label services that license from wholesale VPN solution providers. In the white-label solution market, there is one (and only one) thing that matters: price. VPN providers that opt for white-label solutions, usually opt for the cheapest ones. These, however, rarely meet the privacy and security standards that are advertised.

Bought reviews

Whenever you search online for “best VPN” or something alike, hundreds of results with lists like “best VPN in 2019” or “top 10 VPNs for streaming” pop up. What seems like a helpful guide to get the best for your buck is actually paid advertisement and completely misleading for customers. Because most of these reviews are actually paid ones. The more a VPN provider pays, the better it ranks.

Summary

As I show in this article, dubious business practices are omnipresent. There are a staggering number of players in the VPN market that concentrate on phony advertising instead of providing a high-quality product for the customer. It is difficult for an advanced VPN user to assess the quality of a service, and it is nearly impossible for a novice user to do so. With the high competition in the VPN market, many successful companies focus on cutting the cost of the service with implications on privacy and security, to then spending the profits in dishonest marketing.

We know that the VPN market is oversaturated. There really is no need for just another VPN service. That’s why we decided to do it differently. Many VPN companies do not live up to their claims.

That’s why we decided to create the first VPN with privacy by design – our users can verify that we keep what we preach.
That’s why we don’t have user accounts – we know nothing about our users and hence cannot leak or log anything.
That’s why we refrain from dubious marketing practices – we instead spend our money on improving our product than paid reviews.

My Privacy and Usability Browsing Guide

Yvan — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 12:21:00 +0000

Between privacy and usability I am very far away from the usability part

Often users ask me how I use my browser and how I handle the balance between privacy and usability. Let me describe the entire process from starting up my computer to the first search result. Here, I must admit that between privacy and usability I am very far away from the usability part. You will still find something for you in this article, I promise. So let’s start.

I start my computer, and the first thing I do is turning on my VPN or at least verify that it is correctly turned on. When starting up, it usually happens that the wireless connection can’t be found immediately and we don’t want the VPN to idle because it doesn’t find a network. Whenever I want to check if my VPN is still properly connected, I visit ipleak.net to check my IP location.

As recommended in previous articles, I use Firefox with many add-ons and adapted privacy settings. Have a look at our earlier articles on how to have the best privacy with Firefox add-ons and how to boost your privacy and security with hidden Firefox settings.

All add-ons are active when I start up Firefox. Regularly, I change the user agent with the User Agent Switcher add-on. Today, I chose Chrome on macOS. My browser opens directly the private search engine Startpage. With Startpage, I have found the best search engine both combining privacy and usability. This time it’s not either or, but you can actually have both!

When I get onto a page, my NoScript add-on blocks all JavaScript. In case the site doesn’t load properly or I want to use all features, I can turn on the scripts that I want. NoScript has two benefits: First, it shows me the tons of scripts that are running in the background and that most people are not aware of. Secondly, it empowers you to choose who is allowed to get your data and who is not. Some script from domains that I fully trust land on my whitelist and are always enabled. I know it can be tedious to figure out what scripts must be loaded to display the site correctly, but having full control over it is a great feeling.

Naturally, all cookies are discarded after every session. Therefore, I have to log into my accounts every time. This is really easy when you use a password manager. You can just copy and paste email and password or even have it filled in automatically. Who would want to type in over 50 random characters on every log in?

So all this might sound complicated and tedious, but you quickly have the routine and do this in no time. It helps in understanding the threats to privacy and security and keeps you aware of the risks. Now, don’t think that I’m paranoid that every site might steal my data. It is not more paranoid than when you look left and right before crossing a road because you are aware of the risk of getting run over by a truck. It becomes natural and is not annoying at all.

The cool thing is that my browser resides within a virtual machine (like a separate computer within the computer) and my physical device never directly access the internet. And the best thing is that every time I shut it down, this virtual machine auto-destroys itself and regains the state of before starting up. Everything that accessed the computer, all fingerprints or malware is deleted, and a clean version is restored. So even if I’m not careful, my primary device never gets infected.

Every time my computer is shut down, it auto-destructs itself.

There clearly is a middle way between usability and privacy. In my opinion, the most important thing is being aware of the security risks. The extra effort is definitely worth it compared to having malware on your device, having your data stolen or being watched by Facebook. I wanted to make everything I described above much more comfortable and more accessible. Honestly, not many will read this article to the end and start changing the way they browse. With SnowHaze, we made these things more comfortable and more usable. If you care about your privacy and that of your family, tell them about SnowHaze. It’s free there’s no longer a reason to not be protected.

Misconceptions about Incognito mode

Yvan — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 11:50:15 +0000

Incognito mode and Private Browsing

Nearly all browsers offer the option to browse the internet privately. These options are called private or incognito mode. Commonly, developers build a nice UI around it showing a guy with a hat and stick-on mustache like the one shown below. The big misconceptions here is that turning on incognito mode is beneficial to your online privacy.

The purpose of incognito is to leave no trace on your computer. This was helpful at the time we still had one computer per household, and the following user would see what searches one entered. Nowadays, everyone has his personal device, so the threat of leaving an embarrassing search history or open tabs is not that important anymore. Since all the removed data are local data, this doesn’t change anything when it comes to the data we share online. (There are possibilities for websites to look at your history, more info here.)

By removing local data that was accumulated during your searches, the browser also eliminates cookies, which get stored in your browser. This comes very handy when you try to buy your plane ticket online. Many airlines save cookies on your device when you look around their page. Suddenly, a couple of hours later when you check again, they pushed your price up.

Why isn’t it enough?

So far we looked at local data. However, to really attain the privacy that is usually praised by those browsers, we have to control the data that actually find its way onto the internet.

An excellent private browser also protects you from the many fingerprinting techniques used. Blocking fingerprinting methods like canvas fingerprinting, audio context, social media buttons, and tracking scripts are all part of a real private mode.

Last but not least, your IP address makes you still almost uniquely identifiable. The IP address is like the address on your mail; it is necessary to receive data. You can protect your IP address as well as your internet traffic by using a VPN. A VPN makes queries and transmits data on your behalf. You don’t get directly in touch with the website, and the website only sees the VPN server. Your internet service provider and other third parties cannot monitor what you do online because your device encrypts the data before sending it.

SnowHaze browser protects your privacy by blocking and spoofing fingerprinting techniques. SnowHaze VPN uses government-grade encryption and is the only VPN service that has no possibilities to identify it’s users. In combination, you have all the tools necessary to take back control over your data online. So next time you see a guy with a hat and stick-on mustache, it might just be for the looks and not for your benefit.

Science and Incognito mode

The university of Chicago did a research about incognito mode with 450 subjects and found that:

“46.5% of subjects ‘thought bookmarks saved in private mode would not continue in later sessions,’ when they actually do.
“40.2% of subjects thought websites would not be able to determine a user’s location,” while in private mode. You can make it harder to estimate your location if you use a VPN.
“27.1% of subjects considered private mode offered more protection against viruses and malware than standard [mode.]” This is a misconception since any files you download and open on your computer could still be affected with malware or viruses.
“22.0%, 37.0%, and 22.6% of participants falsely believed that ISPs, employers, and the government would be unable to track them when they used private mode.” If you’re on someone’s network, chances are they can see what you’re doing

The entire study can be found here.

WebRTC leaks or why the right combination of iOS browser and VPN is important

Jan — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 13:00:28 +0000

Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) is a collection of standardized technologies that allows web browsers to communicate with each other directly without the need for an intermediate server. This makes WebRTC faster and reduces the lag for communication, where an intermediate server is not inherently needed. For these reasons, WebRTC is often used for streaming, video chatting, and file sharing.

WebRTC allows devices to communicate directly without an intermediate server.

In online communication, the IP address is of great importance. Similar to your physical home address, the IP is your address on the internet. You need it to receive the data packages. As you can see on the image below, you have a non-unique local IP address and a unique public IP address.

Your device has a non-unique local IP address and a unique public IP address. The public IP address is often used for tracking but VPNs can be used to hide it.

Since the public IP address is often used for tracking you around the web, VPNs are the most used tool to hide it from third parties. However, if two devices want to communicate with each (for example through WebRTC), they need to know each other’s public IP address.

Websites often abuse WebRTC to make your device reveal its true public IP address, even though you’re using a VPN. This is called a WebRTC leak. It is hard for VPN providers to prevent WebRTC leaks if your browser does not protect you. Therefore, it is of great importance to use the right browser in combination with a VPN.

WebRTC leaks on iOS

Because of the closed nature of iOS, the possibilities for users to influence, whether their device is prone to WebRTC leaks or not, is highly limited. Most browsers on iOS leak the true IP address, but there is usually nothing users can do against this. Therefore, choosing the right browser on iOS is essential, even more so when using a VPN, as a WebRTC leak may defeat the entire purpose of using a VPN.

You can check if your device leaks the IP address on browserleaks. We conducted a test with the Brave browser. You can see the results in the screenshots below.

As you can see, Brave does not protect you from WebRTC leaks. Even if you are using a VPN to protect your IP, Brave will still leak it. The test was conducted with browserleaks.com

Obviously, we at SnowHaze are aware of the risks associated with WebRTC – we even took the time to write this blog post. When designing SnowHaze, we made sure that your real IP address is never leaked. You can test for yourself: download SnowHaze for free from the App Store and test if your IP is leaked with WebRTC when using our (or any other) VPN. Below there’s a screenshot of test we conducted with SnowHaze.

As you can see, SnowHaze protects you from WebRTC leaks. The test was conducted with browserleaks.com

Summary

Many online services abuse WebRTC to get your real IP address when using a VPN. Especially on mobile platforms, using the right browser is of great importance. Most browsers will leak your real IP address, and there is not much, users can do, besides switching browser. When designing SnowHaze, we made sure you could use SnowHaze and a VPN without leaking your real IP.

Why the number of IPs and servers might be the wrong metric when choosing a VPN

Jan — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 14:58:44 +0000

Many VPN providers advertise their number of servers and IPs offered. In (usually paid) online VPN reviews, the number of servers is taken as one of the key metrics to judge, whether a VPN service is “good” or “bad”. However, is the number of servers and IPs that your VPN provider offers really important? The short answer is: (As with most things in life,) it depends on the use case. While there are no inherent benefits from having a lot of servers, for some use cases it may be beneficial to have more IPs available. Especially for privacy protection, however, more IPs may be a disadvantage instead of an advantage. Continue reading to get the full reasoning.

In many VPN advertisements, the number of servers and IPs are listed, and the underlying judgment is usually that more servers and IPs are better, as it makes the VPN provider look big, reliable and stable. There is some degree of truth behind this reasoning, as it does take a lot of staff for the administration of a larger number of servers. However, most VPN providers don’t rely on dedicated servers but use cheap and less secure virtual servers, instead. It’s much easier to set up a large number of virtual servers than a large number of dedicated servers. Thus, often times the number of servers may actually give a false feeling of safety.

For most VPN users, the privacy gains associated with a VPN are the main reason for using a VPN. Especially regarding privacy, fewer IPs are actually better. The more users use the same IP, the harder it gets for services to identify you based on the IP. You are a needle in a big haystack. On the other hand, if you connect to a service with a large number of IPs, only a few (if any) other people will be using the same IP that you’re using. This makes you pretty unique and thus easier to track on the internet.

Among the other user cases of using a VPN is streaming georestricted content. Many streaming services like Netflix restrict access to content to certain geographical areas. For example, when streaming with a German IP, you’re only granted access to the content available for Germany. A VPN lets you use the IP from whatever country the VPN server is in. Thus, VPNs are often used to change your perceived location and circumvent content limitations. Many use VPN to watch Netflix in U.S., Canada, Germany and Asia. However, most streaming services blacklist IPs associated with a VPN to prevent such streaming. In this case, a large number of IPs may be beneficial, if the streaming service has not caught all of them. For streaming content, the number of servers is rather unimportant. What’s more important is where these servers are located.

While a large number of IP addresses may be useful for circumventing georestriction, fewer IP addresses usually mean enhanced privacy. Thus, a larger number of IPs and servers is not inherently beneficial and should therefore not be used as a metric when deciding on a VPN provider. Only go with a VPN provider that only uses dedicated servers, as we do here at SnowHaze. These may cost a little more but are also much safer.